Credit Seattle Post Intelligence

In a June analysis, David Strauss, of UBS, wrote that even if Boeing manages to get costs down as fast as it did on its previous all-new plane, the 777, the manufacturing cost for years will vastly exceed the revenue coming in.

"We see 787 burning $4 billion in cash on average annually through 2015," Strauss wrote.

He figures Boeing's outlays for building the jets will swell from $16 billion now to $35 billion by 2019 before cash flow on the program becomes positive.

It could take 1,900 planes before Boeing recovers those costs, Strauss estimated. Only after that would it begin recouping the $15 billion in development expenses.

Using a much more optimistic alternative assumption on how fast Boeing could get its costs down, Strauss reckons Boeing could break even after 1,100 deliveries. An analysis by Doug Harned, of Bernstein Research, came up with a similar number.

"You probably don't have another airplane program where you produce 1,000 units and you didn't have a penny of profit," said analyst Pilarski. "Over a decade, you don't even make a penny."

Can the program ever make it into profit?

Eventually, sometime in the 2020s, well after the first 1,000 deliveries, Boeing would hope to be making 20 percent margins per airplane — an estimated profit of about $23 million per 787 jet, based on the average value of the various Dreamliner models. It would take an additional 650 deliveries or so at that optimal return to recover the $15 billion in one-time development expenses.

Yet the senior engineer puts his faith in the dramatic leaps in productivity and cost-cutting that Boeing has made on the 737 and 777 programs.